How to Prepare for MOEMS: A Parent's Complete Guide

If your child’s teacher mentioned “Math Olympiads,” this is the one they meant. MOEMS (Math Olympiads for Elementary and Middle Schools) has been running since 1979, and more than 120,000 students take part every year. It is also built differently from most other elementary contests: instead of one long test on one afternoon, it is five problems a month, from November through March.

That shape changes how to prepare for MOEMS. A child who is used to 30-question tests will find five problems in 30 minutes strange the first time, and a child who is used to speed drills will find that speed is worth almost nothing here. This guide covers what the contest looks like, how scoring and awards work, how to enter when your school doesn’t run it, this season’s dates and fees, a prep plan that fits the season, and three original problems with worked solutions so you can see what “olympiad” means at this level.

What MOEMS is

MOEMS is a nonprofit that has run math olympiads for elementary and middle school students since 1979. Among its stated goals are “To stimulate enthusiasm and a love for mathematics,” “To teach strategies for problem solving,” “To foster mathematical creativity and ingenuity,” and “To provide the satisfaction, joy and thrill of solving challenges.” Hold onto the one about strategies: the program is organized around them, and so is the best way to prepare.

There are two divisions:

• Division E is for grades 4, 5, and 6.
• Division M is for grades 6, 7, and 8.

Grade 6 appears in both, so a 6th grader’s school chooses which division fits. Students who have finished 8th grade may not take part.

The contest is run at your child’s school by a teacher or parent volunteer called the PICO (the Person in Charge of Olympiads). The PICO enrolls a team, receives each contest a week before it opens, gives it under test conditions, scores it, and enters the results. There is no version a parent signs a child up for online the way you can with Math Kangaroo, and the section on entering below deals with that.

If you are still deciding whether this is the right contest at all, our decision guide lays out how MOEMS differs from the others, and the complete guide to elementary math competitions has the whole field side by side. For the grade-specific view, see the shortlists for 4th graders and 5th graders.

The format, in plain terms

Thirty minutes for five problems works out to six minutes each on average (our arithmetic, not a rule). A MOEMS problem is meant to be sat with, which is the opposite of most tests your child has taken.

A few rules that shape practice:

• Students work alone. The contest is individual, even though scores roll up into a team total.
• Nothing on the desk but pencil and paper. MOEMS says calculators, rulers, graph paper, and other aids are not permitted. If your child leans on a calculator for arithmetic, that habit needs to go before November.
• Strict test conditions. The PICO gives the contest to the whole team at once, and MOEMS asks for it to be run like a real test.
• A four-week window, not a fixed date. MOEMS sets a roughly four-week window for each contest, and the PICO picks the day. Ask your PICO for the date rather than assuming it from the calendar.

Scoring is one point per correct answer. Nothing in the published scoring rules subtracts anything for a wrong answer, so there is never a reason to leave a problem blank. If two minutes remain and one problem is untouched, the best move is a sensible guess.

How scoring and awards work

Each student’s score is the number of problems answered correctly across the five contests, so it runs from 0 to 25. The team score is the sum of the ten highest student scores, taken after the fifth contest, so it runs from 0 to 250. There is no minimum team size, but a team with fewer than ten students is adding up fewer scores than a full one.

The awards, as MOEMS lists them:

• Certificates for all students.
• One Highest Individual Scorer medal.
• Award patches for the top 50%.
• Silver pin for the top 3–10%, and a gold pin for the top 2%.
• George Lenchner Medallion for a perfect score.
• Team awards: a plaque for the top 10% of teams and certificates for the top 11–20%.

Point out the patch to a nervous first-timer. The top half earn one, so a solid middle-of-the-field season comes home with something to keep.

We will not tell you what score earns a pin, because MOEMS does not publish point cutoffs on its public pages, and the percentages above are the only official thresholds. Anyone quoting you a number is guessing.

How to enter when your school doesn’t run it

MOEMS says participation “is available to public, private, parochial, home schools, institutes, and, with restrictions, individuals.” In practice that gives you four routes.

1. Your school already runs it. Ask the math teacher or the front office who the PICO is. Teams hold up to 35 students, and the PICO enrolls the roster.

2. Your school doesn’t run it yet. This is the most common situation, and the fix is a conversation. A teacher, a librarian, or a parent volunteer can be the PICO. The fee is charged per team, not per student, so a full team splits it to a few dollars each, and the job is five contests of 30 minutes plus a few practice sessions. When you ask, bring three things: the official site, the one-page format above, and a list of the other parents who are interested. A teacher is far more likely to say yes to a team that already exists.

3. You homeschool. Home schools are on MOEMS’s own list of who may participate, and they enroll the same way a school does: one adult acts as PICO for the team.

4. A learning center or tutoring program. MOEMS calls these institutes. They may enroll a team, with two rules worth knowing: a student can be on only one team, and institute teams are eligible for individual awards but not team awards. Each student needs a parent-signed form confirming they are not on another team.

Individuals are listed as possible “with restrictions,” and MOEMS does not spell those restrictions out on its public pages. If none of the four routes above works for you, contact MOEMS directly and ask.

MOEMS also runs one-day local tournaments, with an individual round and a team round, which the organizer describes as “a great intro to Math Olympiads.” They run April through December, anyone can join, and they are separate from the five-contest season.

Dates and deadlines

Current as of September 2026, covering the 2026–27 season. Every other section of this guide is evergreen; this one changes each year, so confirm it on moems.org before your school enrolls.

Enrollment fee, per team of up to 35 students:

Contest windows:

* MOEMS’s two official listings currently give two different closing dates for Contest 5. Your PICO picks the day within the window, so ask them rather than the calendar.

The early-bird tier has passed for this season, but the standard fee holds until mid-October, which is exactly when a school that hasn’t enrolled yet still can. If you are trying to persuade a teacher, that is the date to mention.

What a MOEMS problem looks like

MOEMS describes its problems as “non routine,” and that is the right word. A routine problem tells you what to do and checks whether you can do it. A non-routine problem gives you a situation and leaves the method to you. The organizer’s own advice to PICOs is to let students “explore the problems before they sit for the contest,” in small groups, with each group presenting “its method of solution” to the others. Method is the whole game.

In Division E, five strategies carry most of the load:

1. Draw it. A rectangle, a number line, a row of coins. Most 4th and 5th graders who get stuck have not drawn anything yet.
2. Make a list or a table. Organized cases, so nothing is skipped or counted twice.
3. Work backwards. When the problem gives the ending and asks for the beginning.
4. Find the pattern. Try the first few cases, spot the rule, then jump to the case asked for.
5. Guess, check, revise. Not random guessing: a first guess, a check against the conditions, and a second guess that uses what the first one taught you.

Here are three original problems in the Division E style, easiest to hardest, each built around one of those strategies. None is taken from a real contest. Let your child try each one before reading the solution.

Problem 1: Work backwards

Maya thinks of a whole number. She doubles it, subtracts 7, then multiplies the result by 3. Her final answer is 45. What number did Maya start with?

Solution. The problem tells us the end and asks for the beginning, so undo each step in reverse order, using the opposite operation.

• The last step was “multiply by 3” and gave 45, so before that step the number was 45 ÷ 3 = 15.
• Before “subtract 7” the number was 15 + 7 = 22.
• Before “double it” the number was 22 ÷ 2 = 11.

Check forward: 11 doubled is 22, minus 7 is 15, times 3 is 45. It works.

Answer: 11

What this teaches: the forward check at the end is not optional. Working backwards is easy to get right and easy to get wrong in the same way (adding when you should subtract), and the check catches it in ten seconds.

Problem 2: Draw it

A rectangle 6 cm long and 4 cm wide is cut into 1-cm squares. How many of the small squares touch the outside edge of the rectangle?

Solution. Draw the 6-by-4 grid. There are 6 × 4 = 24 small squares altogether.

The squares that do not touch the edge form a smaller rectangle in the middle. Strip one square off each side and that inner rectangle is 4 by 2, which holds 4 × 2 = 8 squares.

So the squares that touch the edge number 24 − 8 = 16.

You can also count the border directly: the top and bottom rows hold 6 each, for 12, and the left and right columns add 2 more each once the corners are already counted, for 4. That gives 16 again.

Answer: 16

What this teaches: two different counts that agree are worth more than one careful count. A child who counts the border by walking around it usually double-counts a corner and gets 20. The inner-rectangle method has no corners to trip over.

Problem 3: Guess, check, revise

Ravi has 12 coins, all nickels, dimes, and quarters, worth $1.30 in total. He has twice as many nickels as quarters. How many dimes does he have?

Solution. The condition “twice as many nickels as quarters” ties two of the three unknowns together, so guess the number of quarters and let everything else follow. Keep a table.

The second row is worth exactly $1.30, so Ravi has 2 quarters, 4 nickels, and 6 dimes.

Notice the value column climbs by 5¢ per row: each extra quarter brings in a quarter and two nickels (35¢) and pushes out three dimes (30¢). A child who spots that can jump from the first guess straight to the answer.

Answer: 6

What this teaches: the question asks for dimes. A child who solves the whole thing correctly and writes “2” (the quarters, which they found first) gets no point. Reading the question one more time before writing the answer is the cheapest point in the contest.

A season-long prep plan

Because MOEMS is spread over five months, the plan is a rhythm rather than a sprint. Everything below fits in two or three sessions a week of about 20 minutes.

September and October, before Contest 1. Two sessions a week, no clock. Take one strategy per week from the list above and work only problems that use it: a week of drawing, a week of tables, a week of working backwards. The aim is for your child to recognize which tool a problem is asking for, which is a skill school math rarely teaches. Use the free sample contest from MOEMS in the last week of October as a first look at the real format, still untimed.

The week before each contest, November through March. One timed set: five problems in 30 minutes, in one sitting, with nothing on the desk but pencil and paper. Then go over the set together, and for each problem ask which strategy would have opened it up. Keep the rest of that week light.

The weeks between contests. One problem a day, untimed, at the kitchen table. Ten minutes is plenty. When your child is stuck, ask “what could you draw?” or “what if the number were smaller?” rather than hinting at the answer. And after each contest, ask the PICO to go over the five problems with the team. The PICO scores every contest, so they have the answers, and the contest your child just sat is the most motivating practice set of the month.

The two habits that matter most. First, reading the question twice: once before starting and once before writing the answer, because a correct solution to the wrong question is worth nothing. Second, checking: plugging the answer back into the problem, the way Problem 1 does above. Together they recover more points than any amount of extra practice.

Mistakes that cost points

• Racing. A child who finishes in twelve minutes has left eighteen minutes of checking on the table.
• Quitting at minute three. Non-routine means the first idea often fails. Teach your child that a stuck moment is normal and that the next move is to draw something or try a smaller number, not to give up.
• Answering a different question. Problem 3 asks for dimes; a child who reports quarters has done the work and lost the point.
• Skipping the check. Substituting the answer back takes seconds and catches most arithmetic slips.
• Drilling school worksheets. Forty long-division problems build speed at long division, which MOEMS does not reward. Twenty minutes on two olympiad-style problems beats an hour of routine practice.
• Ignoring the free sample. MOEMS publishes a sample contest and a Problem of the Week for anyone to use. Do at least one before November.

What to expect on contest day

Your child will sit the contest at school, with their team, on a day the PICO has chosen inside the window. It is 30 minutes, under test conditions, alone at a desk with pencil and paper. The PICO collects and scores the papers and enters the results, so the PICO is the person to ask for your child’s score.

Because it is only 30 minutes and five problems, the contest is a small event in the school day, and there is another one next month. If your child has never done a competition before, our guide to a child’s first math competition covers the feelings side, which matters more than the math on the first day.

When your child comes home, ask which problem was the most interesting, not how many they got. With five problems, a bad day is two and a good day is three, and the difference is one problem. Awards are based on the whole season and come after the fifth contest, so don’t expect a patch in December.

Where to find practice material

MOEMS is easier to practice for than many contests, because the organizer publishes and sells its own material:

• Free from MOEMS: a sample contest for Division E and a Problem of the Week, both available to everyone on the official site’s resources page.
• With enrollment: the PICO’s password gives access to 100 practice problems from the previous two years, with solutions. If your school is enrolled, ask the PICO to share them with the team.
• The official books: MOEMS sells collections of past contest problems, starting with Dr. George Lenchner’s Math Olympiad Contest Problems for Elementary and Middle Schools (400 Division E problems) and continuing through several later volumes, plus his Creative Problem Solving in School Mathematics. A single copy runs about $36 to $40 in the official store. They are organized by contest year, not by strategy.

That last point is the gap we built our MOEMS Division E prep guide to fill. It is organized by strategy rather than by contest, with original problems for each one, five full practice olympiads in the real format, and solutions written so a parent who isn’t a math person can follow along. There is a free sample on the page.

If you’d rather start with something free, our Problem of the Week sends one original problem to your inbox each week, and for 5th and 6th graders the weekly worksheets deliver a lesson, a worksheet, and solutions every Monday. If your school runs the Noetic Learning Math Contest as well, our Noetic prep guide covers that one the same way.

Frequently asked questions

Is MOEMS hard? The problems are meant to be non-routine, so yes, harder than schoolwork, but in the thinking rather than the arithmetic. A 4th grader who likes puzzles will find it a good fit; one who only likes being fast may find it frustrating at first.

Can my child do it at home? Not in the way some contests allow. MOEMS is administered by a PICO to a team. Home schools may enroll a team, and individuals are allowed “with restrictions” that MOEMS does not publish, so contact them directly if a team is not an option.

Are calculators allowed? No. Calculators, rulers, graph paper, and other aids are all off the desk.

What is a good score? A student score runs from 0 to 25 over the season. MOEMS publishes award thresholds as percentages (patches for the top 50%, silver pins for the top 3–10%, gold pins for the top 2%) and does not release point cutoffs. For a first season, a sensible goal is to get one problem right on each contest and to attempt all five every time.

Division E or Division M for a 6th grader? Grade 6 is listed in both, and the enrolling school chooses. For a first year, Division E is the gentler start.

What does it cost? The fee is per team, not per student, and the tiers are in the dates and deadlines table above. Split across a full team of 35, it comes to a few dollars a student, and the school usually covers it.

This guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by Math Olympiads for Elementary and Middle Schools (MOEMS®). “MOEMS” is a trademark of its respective owners. This guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by Math Kangaroo USA or Kangourou sans Frontières. “Math Kangaroo” is a trademark of its respective owners. This guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by Noetic Learning. “Noetic Learning Math Contest” is a trademark of its respective owners. All contest details come from MOEMS’s official website as of September 2026 and can change, so confirm dates, fees, and rules on the official site before your school enrolls.

Where to go from here

If your school is enrolling this season, the date that matters is October 15, 2026, the last day at the standard fee. Everything else can wait; that one can’t.

For practice, our MOEMS Division E prep guide teaches the strategies behind olympiad problems, with original practice and five full practice olympiads. The Problem of the Week is free and needs no sign-up beyond an email address. Either way, start with one problem this week, untimed, at the kitchen table. That habit is what makes contest day feel ordinary.